Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani (2002) has an amazing cast, including such big names as Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Manisha Koirola, Arshad Warsi, and Aftab Shivdasani, along with a veritable who's who of Bollywood supporting players, including brief appearances by local favorites Amrish Puri and Johny Lever. And I can't quite figure out why. Did they all lose a bet? Were they being blackmailed? Have they been cursed by a wicked witch? Are they professional actors who took a job working with an otherwise well-regarded director because they wanted to be paid? It is a mystery.
The plot is also kind of hard to figure out, but I will do my best. Our thirtysomething actors are part of a large group of college students. The boys all have distinct character traits; Atul (Akshay Kumar) is a charming atheist, Prem (Aftab Shivdasani) is a hapless would be romantic, Vijay (Sunil Shetty) is tough, Abdul (Arshad Warsi) is annoying, Ashok (Aditya Pancholi) is a rich jerk, Rajesh (Rajat Bedi) is a bully with a talent for mimicry, and so on. (This movie has a big cast) The girls, on the other hand, are mostly defined by their relationships with men, apart from Divya (Manisha Koirola). She's tough, fearless, kind, and doomed, and also happens to be engaged to businessman Karan Saxena (Sunny Deol.) (And I appreciate that they didn't even try to convince us that Sunny Deol is a college student.)
Rajesh and his sidekick Madan (Siddharth Ray) break into the girls' hostel and attempt to rape Divya, only to be stopped and beaten to a pulp by Karan, who drags them to . . . the college principal? And then convinces the principal to expel them rather than press charges? And then, when the would be rapists beg not to be expelled because it would ruin their careers, he sends them to ask forgiveness from Divya, and then all her friends pressure her to forgive them and everybody carries on as if nothing happened. Seriously, what the hell, movie?
Late at night, Divya follows a mysterious voice into a nearby park (which is pretty clearly a painted set, but it's a nice painted set). The voice belongs to Kapil (Arman Koli), a magical shapechanging snake and Divya's lover in a previous life; long story short, they were dancing and singing through a mystical realm of dodgy computer graphics and accidentally disturbed the meditations of Amrish Puri, who cursed them.
Now Divya is torn between her supernatural lover and Sunny Deol, and that's when her idiot friends call to invite her to a party. Unfortunately, she winds up talking to Rajesh, who uses his mimicry skills to convince her that she's talking to the whole group, and they all want her to show up an hour early. She does, Rajesh and Madan attack her, and she kills herself, living just long enough for the whole group to arrive so she can swear vengeance on them all. Kapil shows up to kill Madan, just to get the ball rolling.
From here, the film becomes a straight supernatural revenge thriller, with Kapil the serpent and Divya's angry ghost picking off the friends one by one. The twist is that the men who actually attacked her get killed right away, while the rest of the friends are not technically guilty of the crime Divya thinks they are guilty of. Though when I think back to the "forgive your rapist" scene, I can't help but feel that she still has a point, since none of this would have happened if Rajesh and Madan were in jail where they belong.
The problem is that the cast is huge; normally with this sort of movie the supernatural creatures are working through a group of six or so, but this group is at least twice as big. The movie never focuses on anyone for very long, and as a result it's hard to tell who the actual protagonist is supposed to be.
Ninety percent of Jaani Dushman is fun bad movie; the special effects are atrocious, the only acting is overacting, and Kapil the ancient shapechanging serpent who spent a thousand years trapped in a tree spends most of the movie dressed up like Neo from The Matrix for no apparent reason. The other ten percent can get a bit heavy, though; the actual assault isn't very graphic, but watching everyone in Divya's life fail to support her is infuriating.
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Saturday, February 22, 2020
*Heavy sigh.*
Jaan-E-Mann: Let's Fall in Love . . . Again (2006) is every bit as subtle as the subtitle implies. It's a deliberate throwback to the romantic comedies of the mid-Nineties, with gratuitous special effects, choreography by Farah Khan, and an excellent cast (including Preity Zinta, the human Incarnation of Adorableness), and these are all things which I love, so this movie should make me fall in love . . . again. And yet, I have not fallen in love . . . again.
Salman Khan plays Suhaan Kapoor, a struggling actor, and the reason he's struggling is that he absolutely refuses to take any role that isn't the lead, and is also kind of a low-key jerk most of the time. He does have at least one friend, though - his uncle, Boney Kapoor (Anupam Kher), who is . . . . sigh. Boney is supposed to be a little person, and since Kher is not a little person, they create the illusion by having Kher walk around on his knees. It is exactly as embarrassing as it sounds.
Suhaan used to be married to Piya (Preity Zinta), but as a convenient song/flashback helpfully explains, when he got his big break, the director was horrified to discover that he had cast a married actor and threatened to fire Suhaan unless he agreed to stay away from his wife until the film's release. The film finally came out and was a massive flop, and when Suhaan Finally returned home, Piya was gone. He tried for months to contact her, but in the end the only reply he received was divorce papers.
Suhaan owes Piya a great deal of alimony, and he has no money to pay it (since again, struggling actor who refuses to take any role which is not the lead despite the fact that his one starring role was a box office disaster) but just when things are looking bleak, Agastya Rao (Akshay Kumar) arrives. Agastya was desperately in love with Piya in college, but she never really noticed him. Still Agastya, who is now an astronaut, which is important to the framing story and the genuinely terrible final twist but doesn't really play into the main plot of the movie at all, has traveled all the way to India to see her again, only to find Suhaan, instead. Agastya doesn't realize that Suhaan is the ex-husband, and this gives Boney an idea: if Agastya marries Piya, then Suhaan won't owe her any alimony anymore.
Agastya flies to New York to find Piya, and Suhaan accompanies him as his wingman; it's like Cyrano de Bergerac if Cyrano were a creepy, manipulative jerk. They rent the apartment directly across from Piya, and set up a powerful telescope to spy on her 24-7, and the movie never, ever calls them out on this outrageous invasion of privacy. A friendly cafe owner who is also played by Anupam Kher gives them a pair of walkie-talkie earpieces, and thus equipped Agastya makes contact, while Suhaan lurks nearby in a variety of stupid disguises.
First surprise - Piya remembers Agastya. In fact, she remembers him fondly, and knows that he was in love with someone at college, and left when his heart was broken. Agastya uses Suhaan's knowledge of Piya to insert himself into her life. So far she clearly thinks of him as a friend, but things are going well, so well that Suhaan is having doubts.
(I will give the movie credit for this: Piya in person is a different, kinder, and more empathetic person than Piya in the flashbacks. It's clear that both Suhaan and Agastya are remembering her in the context of their own romantic disappointments, rather than as an actual person with agency who is free to love or not love anybody she chooses. And now I am done giving the movie credit for things.)
Suhaan's doubts increase thanks to the second surprise - Piya has a daughter. His daughter. Suddenly all bets are off. Suhaan wants his wife and child back, so he goes off to get a job in order to be worthy of them. Unfortunately, while he is doing this, Agastya and Piya visit her family, Agastya accidentally proposes, and her family pressures her into accepting. Suhaan nobly sacrifices his love and leaves, which means it's up to Agastya to realize the true situation and arrange things so that husband and wife can finally fall in love . . . again.
I'll be honest. I watched this movie because I have missed Preity Zinta, and she is genuinely delightful here, displaying her usual mix of bubbly charm and dramatic pathos. She is not enough to save the movie, though; it's a jumbled mess that can't decide whether to be a David Dhawan style broad comic farce or a Karan Johar style tearjerker, so it tries to be both and fails utterly.
And then there's that final twist. Normally I try not to spoil this kind of thing, but this movie is bad and I do not want you to watch it, so here it is. Turn back if you don't want to know.
In the framing story, Agastya is on a space station (astronaut, remember?), telling his blonde fellow astronaut about his friend Suhaan. We do not see blonde astronaut's face. At one point in the main story, Agastya tells Suhaan that it is a scientific fact that everybody in the world has six other people with the same face, and sure enough, at the end we finally see blonde astronaut's face, and yes, she's played by Preity Zinta. And for some reason she's thrilled to discover that she's the Madelyne Pryor to Piya's Jean Grey, a second choice who only gets her man because she looks just like her man's lost love, and I roll my eyes so hard that they're still sore.
Salman Khan plays Suhaan Kapoor, a struggling actor, and the reason he's struggling is that he absolutely refuses to take any role that isn't the lead, and is also kind of a low-key jerk most of the time. He does have at least one friend, though - his uncle, Boney Kapoor (Anupam Kher), who is . . . . sigh. Boney is supposed to be a little person, and since Kher is not a little person, they create the illusion by having Kher walk around on his knees. It is exactly as embarrassing as it sounds.
Suhaan used to be married to Piya (Preity Zinta), but as a convenient song/flashback helpfully explains, when he got his big break, the director was horrified to discover that he had cast a married actor and threatened to fire Suhaan unless he agreed to stay away from his wife until the film's release. The film finally came out and was a massive flop, and when Suhaan Finally returned home, Piya was gone. He tried for months to contact her, but in the end the only reply he received was divorce papers.
Suhaan owes Piya a great deal of alimony, and he has no money to pay it (since again, struggling actor who refuses to take any role which is not the lead despite the fact that his one starring role was a box office disaster) but just when things are looking bleak, Agastya Rao (Akshay Kumar) arrives. Agastya was desperately in love with Piya in college, but she never really noticed him. Still Agastya, who is now an astronaut, which is important to the framing story and the genuinely terrible final twist but doesn't really play into the main plot of the movie at all, has traveled all the way to India to see her again, only to find Suhaan, instead. Agastya doesn't realize that Suhaan is the ex-husband, and this gives Boney an idea: if Agastya marries Piya, then Suhaan won't owe her any alimony anymore.
Agastya flies to New York to find Piya, and Suhaan accompanies him as his wingman; it's like Cyrano de Bergerac if Cyrano were a creepy, manipulative jerk. They rent the apartment directly across from Piya, and set up a powerful telescope to spy on her 24-7, and the movie never, ever calls them out on this outrageous invasion of privacy. A friendly cafe owner who is also played by Anupam Kher gives them a pair of walkie-talkie earpieces, and thus equipped Agastya makes contact, while Suhaan lurks nearby in a variety of stupid disguises.
First surprise - Piya remembers Agastya. In fact, she remembers him fondly, and knows that he was in love with someone at college, and left when his heart was broken. Agastya uses Suhaan's knowledge of Piya to insert himself into her life. So far she clearly thinks of him as a friend, but things are going well, so well that Suhaan is having doubts.
(I will give the movie credit for this: Piya in person is a different, kinder, and more empathetic person than Piya in the flashbacks. It's clear that both Suhaan and Agastya are remembering her in the context of their own romantic disappointments, rather than as an actual person with agency who is free to love or not love anybody she chooses. And now I am done giving the movie credit for things.)
Suhaan's doubts increase thanks to the second surprise - Piya has a daughter. His daughter. Suddenly all bets are off. Suhaan wants his wife and child back, so he goes off to get a job in order to be worthy of them. Unfortunately, while he is doing this, Agastya and Piya visit her family, Agastya accidentally proposes, and her family pressures her into accepting. Suhaan nobly sacrifices his love and leaves, which means it's up to Agastya to realize the true situation and arrange things so that husband and wife can finally fall in love . . . again.
I'll be honest. I watched this movie because I have missed Preity Zinta, and she is genuinely delightful here, displaying her usual mix of bubbly charm and dramatic pathos. She is not enough to save the movie, though; it's a jumbled mess that can't decide whether to be a David Dhawan style broad comic farce or a Karan Johar style tearjerker, so it tries to be both and fails utterly.
And then there's that final twist. Normally I try not to spoil this kind of thing, but this movie is bad and I do not want you to watch it, so here it is. Turn back if you don't want to know.
In the framing story, Agastya is on a space station (astronaut, remember?), telling his blonde fellow astronaut about his friend Suhaan. We do not see blonde astronaut's face. At one point in the main story, Agastya tells Suhaan that it is a scientific fact that everybody in the world has six other people with the same face, and sure enough, at the end we finally see blonde astronaut's face, and yes, she's played by Preity Zinta. And for some reason she's thrilled to discover that she's the Madelyne Pryor to Piya's Jean Grey, a second choice who only gets her man because she looks just like her man's lost love, and I roll my eyes so hard that they're still sore.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Into the woods.
As the title suggests, Byomkesh Pawrbo (2016) is a movie about Bengali writer Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's most famous creation, the master detective Byomkesh Bakshi (played here by Abir Chatterjee.) Byomkesh has been asked to investigate an arms smuggling ring, so he travels to a small town in the forests of northern Bengal, accompanied by his wife Satyabati (Sohini Sarkar) and his faithful sidekick and chronicler Ajit (Ritwick Chakraborty).
When they arrive, there are . . . complications. The local police inspector (Sumanta Mukherjee) has told everyone that the great detective Byomkesh Bakshi is coming. The forest is rumored to be haunted by a "ghost rider," a spectral figure dressed in black and mounted on a black horse. The town has multiple shady industrialists/obvious suspects. And Satyabati, who insisted on joining the expedition, comes down with a serious case of cabin fever.
And then there are the murders. A young man is killed, apparently by the ghost rider. While investigating that death, Byomkesh witnesses another man getting blown up by a booby trap. Fortunately. Byomkesh isn't just a well-read eccentric with keen observational skills, he's also a two-fisted man of action with a knack for disguise and a working knowledge of the Mahabharata.
I don't really have very much to say about Byomkesh Pawrbo; it's a well crafted mystery with engaging actors, and despite the arms smugglers it's closer to what you might see in Midsomer Murders than the pulp craziness of 2015's Detective Byomkesh Bakshi. It's definitely worth your time if you're into that sort of thing.
When they arrive, there are . . . complications. The local police inspector (Sumanta Mukherjee) has told everyone that the great detective Byomkesh Bakshi is coming. The forest is rumored to be haunted by a "ghost rider," a spectral figure dressed in black and mounted on a black horse. The town has multiple shady industrialists/obvious suspects. And Satyabati, who insisted on joining the expedition, comes down with a serious case of cabin fever.
And then there are the murders. A young man is killed, apparently by the ghost rider. While investigating that death, Byomkesh witnesses another man getting blown up by a booby trap. Fortunately. Byomkesh isn't just a well-read eccentric with keen observational skills, he's also a two-fisted man of action with a knack for disguise and a working knowledge of the Mahabharata.
I don't really have very much to say about Byomkesh Pawrbo; it's a well crafted mystery with engaging actors, and despite the arms smugglers it's closer to what you might see in Midsomer Murders than the pulp craziness of 2015's Detective Byomkesh Bakshi. It's definitely worth your time if you're into that sort of thing.
Saturday, February 8, 2020
I was kind of expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla got their big break in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, so the producers of Daulat Ki Jung (1992) don't waste much time in establishing the premise of the movie; they assume the audience is already familiar with Khan and Chawla as star-crossed lovers kept apart by their feuding families. The two houses both alike in dignity are headed by Bhushan Chaudhry (Shafi Inamdar) and Mr. Agarwal (Tiku Talsania.) The feuding fathers are rival builders, both attempting to conclude a shady real estate deal with Haribhai (Paresh Rawal.)
Their children, Rajesh (Khan) and Asha (Chawla) attend the same college, and they are secretly already in love. Everything is fine until the young lovers are cast as young lovers in the school play, and Asha's father Agarwal happens to attend the performance. He is instantly (and correctly) convinced that the pair are really in love, so he hires a goon named Zorro to keep the pair apart. Zorro fails, because he's an idiot who can't help playing with his suspenders whenever he's on screen.
The next step is to lock Asha in her room, which prompts Rajesh to rescue her. The two drive off in search of the nearest temple so they can get married, and that is where the plot starts to go off the rails. They run into a wounded man on a motorcycle (literally), and while taking him to the hospital are surrounded by a motorcycle gang led by Rana (Kiran Kumar.) The bikers are in search of a treasure map, and since the wounded man has conveniently died, they are convinced that the young lovers have it. Asha finds the map, and Rajesh memorizes it (it's established early in the film that he has an eidetic memory) and eats it, forcing the bikers to keep the pair alive if they want to find the treasure.
And the plot goes a little further off the rails when it turns out that there are two criminal gangs, also both alike in dignity, looking for the treasure. The other gang is led by Mike (Dalip Tahil), and the two gangs are about to start killing each other when they are interrupted by K.K. (Kader Khan), an eccentric assassin who sleeps in a coffin pulled by a donkey. K.K. invites himself along on the treasure hunt, and by the time the little group stumbles across a tribal village filled with ridiculous stereotypes, the plot has left the tracks behind and is running screaming into the sunset.
I'm not sure what to make of Daulat Ki Jung. It's definitely a movie, in which events occur and dialogue is spoken. The early part of the movie is rather charming; Rajesh and Asha are surprisingly level-headed for star-crossed lovers, and the school play makes some amusing references to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. At its best, the rest of the movie is pleasantly unhinged, with Kader Khan in particular infusing a great deal of charisma into a very silly role. But the tribal stuff is just embarrassing, with ooga booga gibberish dialogue and the threat of human sacrifice, which is thwarted by a combination of Asha dancing and the men exploiting primitive superstition. I've seen more nuanced portrayals of tribal life in old Tarzan movies.
Tribal nonsense aside, the things that happen are at least interesting, but by the end I was greeting each new plot twist with a hearty "Sure. Why not." Still, in the end, this is absolutely a movie that I have seen.
Their children, Rajesh (Khan) and Asha (Chawla) attend the same college, and they are secretly already in love. Everything is fine until the young lovers are cast as young lovers in the school play, and Asha's father Agarwal happens to attend the performance. He is instantly (and correctly) convinced that the pair are really in love, so he hires a goon named Zorro to keep the pair apart. Zorro fails, because he's an idiot who can't help playing with his suspenders whenever he's on screen.
The next step is to lock Asha in her room, which prompts Rajesh to rescue her. The two drive off in search of the nearest temple so they can get married, and that is where the plot starts to go off the rails. They run into a wounded man on a motorcycle (literally), and while taking him to the hospital are surrounded by a motorcycle gang led by Rana (Kiran Kumar.) The bikers are in search of a treasure map, and since the wounded man has conveniently died, they are convinced that the young lovers have it. Asha finds the map, and Rajesh memorizes it (it's established early in the film that he has an eidetic memory) and eats it, forcing the bikers to keep the pair alive if they want to find the treasure.
And the plot goes a little further off the rails when it turns out that there are two criminal gangs, also both alike in dignity, looking for the treasure. The other gang is led by Mike (Dalip Tahil), and the two gangs are about to start killing each other when they are interrupted by K.K. (Kader Khan), an eccentric assassin who sleeps in a coffin pulled by a donkey. K.K. invites himself along on the treasure hunt, and by the time the little group stumbles across a tribal village filled with ridiculous stereotypes, the plot has left the tracks behind and is running screaming into the sunset.
I'm not sure what to make of Daulat Ki Jung. It's definitely a movie, in which events occur and dialogue is spoken. The early part of the movie is rather charming; Rajesh and Asha are surprisingly level-headed for star-crossed lovers, and the school play makes some amusing references to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. At its best, the rest of the movie is pleasantly unhinged, with Kader Khan in particular infusing a great deal of charisma into a very silly role. But the tribal stuff is just embarrassing, with ooga booga gibberish dialogue and the threat of human sacrifice, which is thwarted by a combination of Asha dancing and the men exploiting primitive superstition. I've seen more nuanced portrayals of tribal life in old Tarzan movies.
Tribal nonsense aside, the things that happen are at least interesting, but by the end I was greeting each new plot twist with a hearty "Sure. Why not." Still, in the end, this is absolutely a movie that I have seen.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
The feather was never magic.
For the record, no tigers, real or imagined, were harmed during the making of Made In China (2019). The film alludes to the practice of making aphrodisiacs out of tiger parts, but the characters do not do that, and the film does not endorse the practice. I am spoiling an actual plot point here, but the (imaginary) tigers are fine.
At a cultural festival in Gujurat, a visiting Chinese dignitary dies after consuming "Tiger Magic Soup", which, as mentioned, contains no actual tiger. The police don't know what is or isn't in the soup, though, so they bring in entrepreneur Raghuvir Mehta (Rajkummar Rao) for questioning, And that provides the opportunity for a lengthy flashback!
It's really pretty straightforward, though. Raghuvir was once a struggling carpet salesman with a long-suffering wife, Rukmini (Mouni Roy), and a dream. Several dreams, in fact - the emu farming didn't work out, but he is certain that success is right around the corner. His family are not so sure, so they browbeat him into flying to China to help his cousin Devraj (Sumeet Vyas) set up an energy drink business. The potential investor, Tanmay Shah (Paresh Rawal) isn't interested, so Devraj scuttles off, but Tanmay sticks around long enough to give Raghuvir some very shrewd (if cynical) advice.
Devraj is still nowhere to be found, so his Chinese contact, Xiu Lee (Danni Wang) tracks down Raghuvir, yells at him, apologizes, takes him out drinking, and somehow convinces him to meet with her old boss Hau Lee (Jeffrey Ho), and he convinces Raghuvir to try and market Tiger Penis Soup (the Chinese version also contains no tiger parts) in India.
And so Raghuvir assembles a crew of misfits, the most important being Doctor Vadhi (Boman Irani), a "sexologist" who impresses Raghuvir with his simple and honest approach to helping people. This is an entrepreneur movie, and, like a sports movie, there are certain story beats that have to happen. They do.
But this is not just an entrepreneur movie. The reason Tiger Magic Soup is so successful is because people aren't willing to talk about issues of sexual health and want a quick fix; Vadhi is using the apparent aphrodisiac as an excuse to start the conversation. Like Raghuvir, this movie is selling something: the importance of sex education and open communication about potentially embarrassing topics. And like Raghuvir, it's not subtle, but it is effective.
At a cultural festival in Gujurat, a visiting Chinese dignitary dies after consuming "Tiger Magic Soup", which, as mentioned, contains no actual tiger. The police don't know what is or isn't in the soup, though, so they bring in entrepreneur Raghuvir Mehta (Rajkummar Rao) for questioning, And that provides the opportunity for a lengthy flashback!
It's really pretty straightforward, though. Raghuvir was once a struggling carpet salesman with a long-suffering wife, Rukmini (Mouni Roy), and a dream. Several dreams, in fact - the emu farming didn't work out, but he is certain that success is right around the corner. His family are not so sure, so they browbeat him into flying to China to help his cousin Devraj (Sumeet Vyas) set up an energy drink business. The potential investor, Tanmay Shah (Paresh Rawal) isn't interested, so Devraj scuttles off, but Tanmay sticks around long enough to give Raghuvir some very shrewd (if cynical) advice.
Devraj is still nowhere to be found, so his Chinese contact, Xiu Lee (Danni Wang) tracks down Raghuvir, yells at him, apologizes, takes him out drinking, and somehow convinces him to meet with her old boss Hau Lee (Jeffrey Ho), and he convinces Raghuvir to try and market Tiger Penis Soup (the Chinese version also contains no tiger parts) in India.
And so Raghuvir assembles a crew of misfits, the most important being Doctor Vadhi (Boman Irani), a "sexologist" who impresses Raghuvir with his simple and honest approach to helping people. This is an entrepreneur movie, and, like a sports movie, there are certain story beats that have to happen. They do.
But this is not just an entrepreneur movie. The reason Tiger Magic Soup is so successful is because people aren't willing to talk about issues of sexual health and want a quick fix; Vadhi is using the apparent aphrodisiac as an excuse to start the conversation. Like Raghuvir, this movie is selling something: the importance of sex education and open communication about potentially embarrassing topics. And like Raghuvir, it's not subtle, but it is effective.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)